Foundations for Organizational Success
Article by Corporate Coach Alchemist Anne Merkel, Ph.D.
During my many years in coaching, management, and consulting I have often thought that I knew exactly what the root or foundation of organizational success looked like. Following the many trends, at one time it seemed to be Quality, then internal and external customer service. As a communications expert, I felt that the real foundation for success had to be communication. These are all important, however, let's go deeper into what brings deep and self-sustaining success.
Organizations are put together with a purpose – by people who participate together to bring forth the vision that they share. How the processes are handled to bring about reaching the goals is vitally important, yet how does an organization ensure that the processes and the results are carried out to the best degree of capability? That is all determined by the people.
The entire organization depends on its people, who do all of the planning, process design and implementation, package and delivery of the products/services, interfacing with customers and suppliers. It makes sense, then, to support these people… the foundation of the organization.
Today's economy has triggered cut-backs in employee support and development, so often organizations are more focused on maintaining the internal workings of the organization than on sustaining those who run the operations. Can productivity and quality be sustained without supporting those who are driving those indicators?
It is my belief that the strength of the organizational foundation is determined by the consciousness, health, well-being, balance of the people who are members of the organization. Their states of mind, body, spirit determine the condition of the organizational culture. When the people are stable, nourished, nurtured, then change can happen around them without destroying the organizational structure.
Of all that we experience in life, change is the only dependable “constant”. Many people and organizations talk of “change management”, and yet, the only thing we can manage is how we react to change and how it affects us through our reactions. We can only “guide” change to a certain degree; in the long run, change just happens.
Change is difficult for most of us. That is why to create a strong foundation for organizational success we must build that around staying in balance with change on both the individual and organizational levels by nurturing the people to be whole, balanced, healthy, conscious.
With their strong, stable human resource base, healthy and balanced organizations can work more easily with change, and in so doing, flow with nature and utilize resources to a full degree.
Those organizations that are not conscious, healthy, and balanced, nor supported by conscious, healthy, balanced employees, work against change, and thus, they resist the flow of nature . Their resistance to change depletes the energy of the organization and its individual parts, and instead of having energy available for optimum performance, the focus is on less essential and more energy-draining activities which tend to bore the people and result in weakened morale, lost productivity, lowered quality.
When you are personally feeling strong, centered, healthy, and conscious, how does change affect you? Or, when you are already weakened in some way physically, mentally, psychologically, emotionally, how does the same change affect you?
This is similar with organizations. We've all encountered healthy conscious organizations or groups that bend with the tides while others break down under the added strains of change. Which is the scenario that you would prefer for your organization?
The foundations for organizational success include supporting consciousness and maintaining the health and balance of an organization through focusing on supporting consciousness, health, and balance in its people, policies, procedures. These must all be in balance and work together for the sustainability and success of an organization.
It is the mission of organizations such as The Ariela Group to support individuals and organizations to claim and maintain consciousness, health, balance, alignment within, in order to sustain success - especially in these times of dramatic change.
You can learn more about supporting your organization’s success and utilizing our Corporate Alchemy™ tools by contacting us. We also encourage you to sign up to receive our free Conscious Living e-zine, or Alchemist Anne blog, to learn more about how to live and work consciously and in alignment!
